Networking services have become increasingly important in today's society. One feature of networking services relates to client or source awareness. Certain services, functions, or capabilities may be provided to a group of end users or to clients based on a corresponding source profile or policy. Devices or components within a network must generally be able to identify such a profile or policy before offering selected enhanced services, functions, or capabilities to a targeted group of end users. Accordingly, sufficient information must be made available at various networking devices in order to allow for an accurate identification of a client or a source.
In some environments, the source identification, policy, or service level may be unknown, hidden, or otherwise transformed such that it is hidden from the perspective of the destination point that receives a message. This translates into a device or a component that receives the message being generally unable to determine a point of origin associated with the data request. This blindness or shielding creates a problem in attempting to offer services or capabilities to a select group of users based on their source profile or policy. In some instances, the inability to determine the origination of a data flow precludes a device or a component from offering services based on the identity of an end user. Accordingly, the ability to provide an awareness feature to interested network equipment (without sacrificing significant amounts of time or bandwidth) presents a significant challenge to network administrators, component manufacturers, and system designers.